Month: September 2025
CNF: Night Shift
by Amy Speace
My mother would throw open the curtains of our darkened yellow room singing, O what a beautiful morning!, the stabbing sun at high noon, a cheery scold as the house had been
moving for hours, alive as a corporation. I never saw the sunrise until I had a baby and then I saw every hour. At night she’d dress in her bridal peach nightgown, long gauze train, satin straps holding her to her vow, over sweatpants smeared with flour handprints. Curled under covers, my sister and I would squeal when she’d enter our room. She called herself the night nymph and would dance us off to sleep, while our father worked past dinner, past stories, past dreaming.
Amy Speace is an award-winning Americana/Folk singer and songwriter, discovered by Judy Collins. Her songs have been recorded by Ms. Collins and many others and she has won “International Song of the Year” from the Americana Music Association (UK). Her writing has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, Working Mother and Salon.com. Her debut collection of poetry, The Cardinals, will be published by Red Hen Press in Spring 2027. She received her MFA from Spalding University and teaches English at Cumberland University. She resides in Nashville, Tennessee with her son, Huckleberry, and her dog, Dusty Springfield.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Night Shift”? I can tell you this. Many of the poem in my collection deal with childhood memories and parenthood, marriage and divorce. There is a theme of my mother’s satin nightgown and my father not being home a lot because of work in different poems. “Night Shift” is a memory piece that started as tercets and I revised it many times using a few different forms. In the end, it seemed to land better in prose, as if the narrator was telling this memory in one breathless outpouring. by Karen Regen Tuero As long as her hat was on, she looked quite good. The hat hid her thinning hair; showing only her thick, dark, shoulder-length curls; letting her imagine she looked young. But sometime between yesterday and today, the hat disappeared, and the jig was up. The hat itself was old yet durable, the packable, washable kind meant for adventures. In earlier days before it ever dutifully protected her vanity, it protected her skin. It had travelled with her the world over, lately to this gaucho town outside of Buenos Aires, where today, as the sun waned, it had to be somewhere. Retracing her steps in and out of the shops, restaurants and cafes around the town square, she encountered sympathetic shopkeepers who shook their heads to her inquires before letting her check for herself whether her hat had been left on a table or dropped on the floor or even forgotten by a washroom mirror. But there was no tan hat. The village dog resting outside of one cafe apparently understood her distress. He led her to the square; waiting patiently, his dappled front paws outstretched on the lawn while she checked each bench, each path, then combed the grounds. He seemed to accept she might expect to find the cotton hat torn to pieces, the handiwork of one of his mangy brothers that ruled the town. But there were no tan cotton pieces anywhere. Later, she found the hat on her bed. She had never put it on. Panic set in. She was at the beginning of a new adventure she had no desire to be on—the great decline. Next time the hat would not so easily reappear. Little by little, all would be lost. Karen Regen Tuero is a Pushcart-nominated writer whose work has appeared in The North American Review, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. For links to her many published stories, go to: https://linktr.ee/kregentuero See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Game Over”? I scribbled most of “Game Over” in a composition notebook while flying home from Argentina last year. Stateside, I read it, along with other material filling the notebook; expecting to use dialogue, description, or snippets to expand the story. But none of it did the trick. That’s when I realized the story was better off short. The problem was, it was incomplete. And I wasn’t sure what it needed. As I pecked the story into my laptop, I had some new ideas, however. Quickly the story coalesced. I looked at the word count, a mere 295 words. I read it again to be sure it didn’t need more. I decided it was all there. My first micro! After printing, normally I revise. A lot! Sometimes for weeks until I’m literally sick. But typically I’m writing novels or longer stories or flash. This time, though, I read it aloud and thought, Hmm, I like this. This was my third submission to Journal of Compressed Arts, where kind rejection notes from Randall, the editor, made me want to try again. I got an interim note saying the story had advanced to the next round, after which a final decision would be made. But with it came editorial advice. Randall suggested I consider taking out the last two ending lines in the original submission. These were: And then what? It would be Game Over. Initially, I was nervous, but reading the story over, I realized it was actually stronger landing on the line: Little by little, all would be lost. Grateful for the suggestion, I told Randall to make that edit. Several months later, I was delighted to learn the story was selected. I sure am glad that on that trip last year I took along a composition notebook. But what writer goes anywhere without one? Or at least a laptop. by Abbie Doll ‘Twas the season of calendars crammed: too many appointments to name, let alone manage. The seeing-yet-another-physician season, the scans-and-surgeries season. The revolving-door season of hospital stays, both scheduled and unforeseen. The insufferable season of suffering, the season of wondering when—or if—you’ll make it back home. The season of asking on repeat: is this it? Is it? The season of one too many close calls, the season of pleading: please, give it to me straight. That d(r)eadful season of determining how and why and when… ‘Twas the season of staring at each clock in disbelief, willing them all to wind back. The season of constant wondering, of hope & despair warring in equal measure. The season of forsaking every last belief while wallowing in the feeling of flat-out defeat. The burdensome season of failing to cope with your new reality: the irreversible necessity of need in every minor thing. Assistance, a must. ‘Twas the season of gradual-yet-rapid deterioration. A season of too many feelings: the regrets, the longings, the never-ending negotiations, the wanting more time, the blues, the blues, those fucking relentless blues. That inescapable shame with your biology to blame. Letting everyone down, down, down…and feeling let down—by your own body no less. Welcome to the season of no autonomy, the postseason period where life itself ceases (to matter), the season where the writing on the wall is unalterable—the stains and scars permanent. The season of incessant apologies, the season where language itself atrophies into sheer inadequacy. You’ve reached the all-too-predictable season of Death approaching—Death lurking, Death bedside-lingering. The sickening season of postmortem planning, concluded by the cessation of planning entirely. Then comes the heavyhearted hassle of saying goodbye, while fickle Father Time clicks his tongue and checks his watch. Enter the unbearable season of not knowing what to say, while somehow also having too much to say. Then comes the season of solitude: of not saying anything at all—where silence descends like snow. Enter the contradictory season of trying to fit everything in, as if you hadn’t already rushed to live your whole damn life. The season of trying to secure One. Last. Taste. The oh-so-infuriating season of demanding a do-over. That back-and-forth seesaw season of wondering if you ever did anything right. That finicky assessment season. The final-countdown season, without knowing exactly when. The hoping-death-is-just-a-new-beginning season. That sucky barnyard season of being put out to pasture—having to let go of everything and everyone you ever knew…or die trying (but really, dying either way). ‘Twas the season of last reflections, the season of sorrow, the season of bargaining, and reluctantly, oh, so reluctantly, the season of acceptance. ‘Twas the final season, after all. The season of separation, the season of farewell. The season of departure, the season of burial. The season of grief, the season of reckoning. The season of no longer being around. The season of no longer being. The season of no longer. Abbie Doll is a writer residing in Columbus, OH, with an MFA from Lindenwood University and is a Fiction Editor at Identity Theory. Her work has been featured in Door Is a Jar Magazine, 3:AM Magazine, and Pinch Journal Online, among others; it has also been longlisted for The Wigleaf Top 50 and nominated for The Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and the Pushcart Prize. Connect on socials @AbbieDollWrites. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “The Descent into Decline”? The format of this piece was inspired by those famous opening lines from A Tale of Two Cities, a book I attempted much too young; said passage was further cemented in my brain by an episode of Hey Arnold! in which Oskar learns to read, and part of that process involves memorizing those lines, then performing them as proof. This was way before streaming, back when kids were subject to watching whatever reruns networks chose to air. But that’s a really lighthearted explanation for such heavy subject matter. Cartoons and literature aside, I came across a “Seasons” prompt for a submission call, and this ended up being the result. Death and grief contain too many seasons to name, and they’re always knotting and unraveling in new, unanticipated ways. by Michael Mark He’d read in college the author of The Stranger swerved around a squirrel that darted in front of the car and crashed into a Plane tree and died. Ever since, he fixated on not avoiding any small animal should it be in front of him on the road. He’d have to hit it. Images of running over varied creatures repeated in his mind whether he was driving or not. He’d be walking and see a bird, and then himself behind the wheel running over that bird. He was haunted, and shared in detail what he saw in his head, even at parties. It never happened until a pigeon, probably lame, because it didn’t fly away as they all had before. The next time he hit a squirrel, like the one Camus successfully avoided. It hardly made a thud, more like a sigh. Michael Mark is the author of Visiting Her in Queens is More Enlightening than a Month in a Monastery in Tibet which won the 2022 Rattle Chapbook prize. His poems appear in Copper Nickel, The New York Times, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, Sixth Finch, Southern Review, The Sun, 32 Poems. His two books of stories are Toba and At the Hands of a Thief (Atheneum). His piece, “House Story,” originally published in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, appeared in The Best Small Fictions 2024. He was included in Best New Poets 2024 and awarded a Pushcart Prize, 2026. michaeljmark.com See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “If Only The Great Thinker Knew it Wasn’t that Bad”? This piece was written with a stoic’s calm. More I witnessed than wrote it. As if I were documenting what I was seeing: in this case my mind, Camus, road, car, squirrel, tree, and me. And the computer keys with my fingers depressing them, finally. There was no sense of uncertainty or surprise.Game Over
The Descent into Decline
If Only The Great Thinker Knew it Wasn’t that Bad
Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.
Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.
Matter Press is now offering private flash fiction workshops and critiques of flash fiction collections here.
Submissions
Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now closed. The reading period for standard submissions opens again September 15, 2025. Submit here.
Upcoming
12/15 • Isabelle Ness
12/22 • Catherine Bai
12/29 • Stephan Viau
01/05 • Allison Blevins
01/12 • Justin Ocelot
01/19 • Yejun Chun
01/26 • Mathieu Parsy
02/02 • Robert McBrearty
02/09 • Sarah Daly
02/16 • Wayne Lee
02/23 • Terena Elizabeth Bell
03/02 • Michael Mirolla
03/09 • Nicholas Claro
03/16 • TBD
03/23 • TBD
03/30 • TBD